She bustled to the hall as she spoke. Thaxton Vail was standing in the front doorway looking disconsolately out into the sunrise.
“He went,” reported Vail, turning back into the house as Miss Gregg and Doris emerged into the hallway. “I’m sorry. For he isn’t fit to. He’s still all in.”
“Who?” asked Doris, her mind still adaze.
“Clive Creede. This thing has cut him up fearfully. He talked a lot of rot about having injured me and not having the courage to face me again. I told him it was absurd. But he went. He wouldn’t even wait for a taxi. Just went afoot, leaving his luggage to be sent for. Poor chap!”
Miss Gregg passed on into the kitchen regions. The police, their inspection of the house’s exterior completed, were trooping ponderously upstairs, Lawton still trailing along dully in their wake. Doris and Vail stood alone in the glory of sunrise that flooded the wide old hall.
For another few moments neither of them spoke again, but stood there side by side looking out on the fire-red eastern sky and at the marvel of sunrise on trees and lawn. Unconsciously their hands had met and were close clasped. It was Doris who spoke at last.
“It was splendid of you,” she said, “not to be angry with Clive for his awful blunders. I—somehow I feel as if I never want to set eyes on him again. My father used to say: ‘I can endure a criminal, but I hate a fool.’ I thought it was a brutally cynical thing to say. But now—well, I can understand what Dad meant.”
“You mustn’t blame old Clive!” begged Vail. “He’s sick and upset and hardly knows what he’s saying or doing. He thought I was in trouble. And he came to my defense. If he did it bunglingly his muddled brain and not his heart went back on him. I’m sorry Miss Gregg spoke to him as she did. It cut him up fearfully.”
“Dear little Aunt Hester!” sighed Doris. “She knew us all when we were babies. And she can’t get over the notion we’re still five years old and that we must be scolded when we’re bad or when we blunder. She’s—she’s a darling!”
“I ought to think so if any one does,” assented Vail. “If it hadn’t been for her testimony I’d be on my way to jail before now. But to think of her having to sit behind my desk all those hours! It was an outrage! The dear old soul!”